The Wizard Of Oz (MGM film)
The Wizard Of Oz is an American musical fantasy film based on the children's novel, The Wonderful Wizard Of Oz by L. Frank Baum. Notable for its use of special effects, Technicolor, fantasy storytelling and unusual characters, it has become, over the years, one of the best known of all films. The film is mostly in Technicolor, but its opening and closing sequences are in sepia-tinted black-and-white, including all of the film's credits. It was directed primarily by Victor Fleming. Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf received credit for the screenplay, but there were uncredited contributions by others. The lyrics for the songs were written by E.Y. Harburg, the music by Harold Arlen. Incidental music, based largely on the songs, was by Herbert Stothart, with borrowings from classical composers. Although the film received largely positive reviews, it was not a huge box office success on its initial release, earning only $3,017,000 on a $2,000,000 budget. The film was MGM's most expensive production up to that time, but its initial release failed to recoup the studio's investment. Subsequent re-releases made up for that, however. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It lost that award to Gone With The Wind, but won two others, including Best Original Song for "Somewhere, Over The Rainbow". The film was released in theaters on August 25, 1939.Telecasts of the film began on November 3, 1956, re-introducing the film to the public and eventually becoming an annual tradition starting on December 13, 1959, making it one of the most famous films ever made. The film was named the most-watched motion picture in history by the Library of Congress, is often ranked among the Top 10 Best Movies of All Time in various critics' and popular polls, and is the source of many memorable quotes referenced in modern popular culture. Plot Dorothy Gale is a 16-year-old orphaned farm girl who lives a simple life in rural sepia-tinted Kansas with her Aunt Em, Uncle Henry, and three farmhands: Hunk, Hickory. and Zeke. When the Gales' cruel neighbor, Almira Gulch, is bitten by Dorothy's pet cairn terrier, Toto, she gets a sheriff's order and takes him away to be destroyed, this causes Dorothy to long for "a place where there isn't any trouble, it's not a place you can get to by a boat or a train, it's far, far away. Behind the moon, beyond the rain". Toto escapes and returns to Dorothy who fears for his life and runs away with him. Dorothy soon encounters a traveling fortune teller named Professor Marvel, who guesses she has run away and tells her fortune. He convinces her to return home by falsely telling her that Aunt Em has fallen ill from grief. With a tornado fast approaching, she rushes back to the farmhouse, but is unable to join her family in the locked storm cellar. Taking shelter inside the house, she is knocked unconscious by a window frame blown in by the twister.Dorothy awakens to find the house being carried away by the tornado, where she sees Miss Gulch pedaling her bicycle, who transforms into a cackling witch flying on a broomstick. After the farmhouse crashes back onto the ground, she opens the door and finds herself alone in a strange village in the Technicolor world of Oz. Arriving in a floating bubble, Glinda the good witch of the north, informs her that her house landed on and killed the wicked witch of the east. The timid munchkins come out of hiding to celebrate the witch's demise by singing. Their celebration is interrupted when the wicked witch of the west suddenly appears in a cloud of smoke and tries to claim her dead sister's powerful ruby slippers. But Glinda magically transfers them onto Dorothy's feet and reminds the witch of the west that her power is ineffectual in Munchkinland. She promises Dorothy "I'll get you, my pretty...and your little dog, too!" before vanishing. When Dorothy asks how to get back home, Glinda advises her to seek the help of the mysterious wizard of Oz in the emerald city, which she can reach by following the yellow brick road, and warns her never to remove the ruby slippers. On her way to the city, Dorothy meets a scarecrow, a tin man, and a cowardly lion, whose faces resemble those of the farmhands, and they lament that they lack respectively a brain, a heart, and courage. The three decide to accompany her in hopes that the wizard will also fulfill their desires, although they demonstrate that they already have the qualities they believe they lack: the scarecrow has several good ideas, the tin man is kind and sympathetic, and the lion is terrified, though he is ready to face danger. After Dorothy and the lion nearly succumb to one of the witch's traps, the quartet enters the emerald city as the townspeople do plenty of work in a beauty salon to freshen them up to go see the wizard. In getting their makeovers, the scarecrow gets re-stuffed with brand new straw, the tin man gets his body very well polished to remove the rust from it, Dorothy gets her hair done along with a subtly more puffed up dress, and the lion gets a permanent and ribbon for his mane and his claws clipped. The four friends do eventually get see the wizard, who appears as a disembodied, intimidating head. In a booming voice, he states that he will consider granting their wishes if they bring him the wicked witch's broomstick. The group set out for the witch's castle, but she detects them and dispatches her army of flying monkeys, who carry Dorothy and Toto back to her. When the witch threatens to drown Toto, Dorothy agrees to give up the slippers, but a shower of sparks prevents their removal. While the witch ponders, Toto escapes and leads Dorothy's companions to the castle. After overpowering some winkie guards and disguising themselves in their uniforms, they free her. The witch and the winkies corner the group on a parapet, where she sets the scarecrow's arm ablaze. Dorothy throws water on her friend and accidentally splashes the witch, causing her to melt. The winkies are delighted, and their captain gives Dorothy the broomstick. Upon their return to the wizard's chamber, Toto opens a curtain, revealing the wizard to be an a normal old man with no real magical powers. Apologetic, he explains that Dorothy's companions already possess what they have been seeking all along, but bestows upon them tokens of esteem in recognition of them and gives the scarecrow a diploma, the lion a medal, and the tin man a heart-shaped clock. Also born in Kansas, he was brought to Oz by a runaway hot air balloon. He offers to take Dorothy home in the same balloon, leaving the scarecrow, tin man, and lion in charge of the emerald city. As they are about to leave, Toto jumps out and Dorothy runs after him. The wizard, unable to control the balloon, leaves without her. Glinda appears and tells her that she always had the power to return home to Kansas: the ruby slippers will take her back. She previously did not tell Dorothy this because Dorothy had to realize for herself that there's no place like home. After saying her goodbyes to her friends in Oz and following Glinda's instructions, Dorothy closes her eyes, taps her heels together three times, and repeats "There's no place like home". She awakens in her bedroom, surrounded by her family, the three farmhands and Professor Marvel. She claims the farmhands and Professor Marvel were in Oz, and tells them of her adventures. Cast of characters Judy Garland as Dorothy Gale Frank Morgan as Professor Chester Marvel / the doorman / the cabbie / the guard / the wizard of Oz Ray Bolger as Hunk Andrews / the scarecrow Jack Haley as Hickory Twicker / the tin man Bert Lahr as Zeke / the cowardly lion Billie Burke as Glinda the good witch of the north Margaret Hamilton as Miss Almira Gulch / the wicked witch of the west Clara Blandick as Aunt Emily Gale Charley Grapewin as Uncle Henry Gale Pat Walshe as Nikko the head flying monkey Terry as Toto the Singer midgets as the munchkins Jerry Maren as the lollipop kid munchkin Mitchell Lewis as the winkie guard captain MGM's Marvelous Wizard Of Oz The film was turned into a one-shot faithful comic book adaptation known as "MGM's Marvelous Wizard Of Oz", it was the very first ever collaboration between Marvel and DC, since the two companies decided to jointly publish the venture, and there are bonus pages including biographies on the actors and stills from the movie. Trivia This classic film version only tells a small portion of the story through a loosely based basic storyline that is light and appropriate for all family-oriented audiences, so it's not a completely faithful adaptation of the story from the very dark and gruesome original novel. In the book, the gift given to the tin man is not a heart-shaped clock but a stuffed satin heart put into his chest and then patched over with tin. The writers had proposed many odd ideas and created new incidents to liven up the story in the very different previous versions of the scripts because the original idea was to turn the story into a slapstick musical comedy that had a character named Dorothy living in Kansas and a house transported to Oz via cyclone, and the resemblance to the book would have ended there because of a few deviations from what was written in it. But when it got too bogged down however, they turned to L. Frank Baum's book for inspiration, so the final results are generally an improvement because it can be seen as a triumph that they are as close to the book as they are, since it is far more faithful to the original storyline! In the book, Oz is a real place where Dorothy and her family eventually go to live forever, but MGM's movie studio executives interpreted the movie's whole Oz experience storyline as all a dream where many of the characters that she meets represent the people from her home life, which was induced by a bump on her head because they felt that thought where the public audiences wouldn't accept and believe the story any other way. The roles of the following characters were transformed in terms of their physical appearances: the unnamed and old wrinkled good witch of the north and the very beautiful and young looking Glinda the good witch of the south were combined into one character to simplify the story for the screen, which resulted in a middle-aged looking witch who wears a glittering ball gown of light pink and travels in a magical bubble. The wicked witch of the west has one eye which is as powerful as a telescope and can see all parts of the land of Oz no matter how far off it is and wears an eye patch on the other, but is only present for one chapter in the exact middle of the book. But, she was changed into a green-skinned witch who wears all black and flies on a broomstick in the sky due to being given an enlarged role and brought in much earlier as a unifying thread for an episodic plot to provide more dramatic tension for the movie. Dorothy is depicted as a 16-year-old damsel in distress who needs to be rescued, while in the novel, she is a little 5-year-old girl who rescues her friends. The pre-release sneak preview version of the movie was not completely edited and ran for nearly two hours in length. A sequel using the original cast was greenlighted, but scrapped after Judy Garland became such a big star and Margaret Hamilton expressed doubts over the feasibility of such a project. The scarecrow's face makeup that Ray Bolger wore consisted of a foam rubber mask that was textured with a woven pattern to look like burlap cloth, it also holes cut out for his eyes and mouth. Jack Haley did not use his normal voice when playing the tin man, only when playing Hickory, and it contains none of the falsetto-like quality that the tin man's did. Several of the earliest scripts included the following characters: Bulbo the son of the wicked witch of the west, a stuck-up niece for Miss Gulch, Betty the spoiled and selfish princess of Oz who had wanted to try to outlaw and eliminate all forms of music except classical and operetta, the grand duke of Oz who gets transformed into a cowardly lion, and Lizzie Smithers the female farmhand who is the wizard's assistant in Oz. Category:Movies Category:The Wizard Of Oz